To Myself at Thirty

a scifiscribbler story

Dear Kember,

Finding a starting place is hard. I’m right on the edge of adulthood, legally. But I don’t know if I feel like I’m there at all.

I just turned eighteen, and Mom is placing some serious stress on how big a milestone that is. I’m off to college in the fall, after all. I don’t know if you’ll remember how crazy Mom got about it. Maybe you’ll be smiling at the memory? But she’s asked me to write a letter to myself at thirty. Something she can send to me when I turn thirty and see how I turned out.

I’m pretty sure she already got me to write one of these when I was way younger, but I can’t remember for sure. Maybe that was actually a teacher? It doesn’t matter. I do love her, and when she’s not doing projects like this, we’re close.

I guess the thing to do is to say what I hope for my future? I’d love to be on TV. Have a starring role in something. But I don’t know if I’m TV pretty, so maybe just extra parts?

I’ll be happy if I’m still working in the theatre as often as possible. That’s really gotta be the goal, and honestly if you haven’t managed that I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you. I was Juliet this year, and sure it was only a school production but it was good. I can still remember the rush and I’m sure you will, too, reading this. Remember hanging on to Jack as we scrambled into place for the curtain call? Remember us both shaking with excitement? That’s how good it was.

I’m hoping that when you read this, all the things I’m worried about will seem tiny. You’re not going to care that Chris kinda sucked as a boyfriend for a while, or worry about petty little stuff, however big it feels to me.

I guess that means I should talk about Chris, too. I hope you’re ready for this. You’ve probably forgotten all about him.

I’ve already told him we’re done after prom. Honestly the only reason we’re not done ahead of prom is I’ve had to put up with him staring at Anna’s boobs for the past month and she doesn’t have a date locked in yet. I’m not going to risk him somehow getting her attention. I mean, I don’t think he’s got a chance, but I gave him a shot, you know? I didn’t see what makes him a bad boyfriend until we were together.

So I told him the reason we’re done is that he’s got no drive whatsoever. He’s bright, he’s sharp, and he should be going places, but he pissed his chance away. He’d need to go to community college just to have a chance at a degree now. Instead he’s got a dead-end job at Tony’s electronics repairs place which he took because “Tony’s never going to fire me and I’m never going to have to do more than phone it in.”

Which I would have more respect for if he was just not into money - but he is. He wants the big house, he wants the kids, he wants the new game consoles and the games to play on them, and he’s expecting me to pay for his way through life.

I really hope you’re just dimly remembering this as I say it. I’d absolutely love it if by the time I’m thirty he’s just this vague image of a face in my memory. I don’t want to be thinking about the guy now, let alone more than ten years from now.

There are more reasons he’s a bad boyfriend, mind you. He’s not just got no drive, he’s selfish. Wanting me to pay for it is just the start. He’ll care right up until you care back, then he’ll abandon the idea completely and just let you care for him. But the big one is that lack of ambition. I want to be going places. He wants me to go places so I can take him with me.

I’m all for women getting their chance but this is bullshit.

Okay. So, so far I’m just bitching, and I’m telling you what I don’t want. I must seem really hard to please, huh? Maybe I am, a bit. But mostly I’ve just had a shitty day, and I’m sure you’re not going to remember that when you read this. So what do I actually want? I guess that’s next, right?

I want to act, like I say. Again, TV is the dream, but theatre will do fine. I’d love for that to be my career, but I’m going to get my MBA just in case. I want to have the tools to do a 9-5 that stays a 9-5, so I have plenty of time to act.

I want to be with someone. I don’t think I care about marriage? And I’ll leave the decision on kids to you. I kinda want one but they’re a lot of hassle. Have one if you get to the point that not having one doesn’t sit right. There’s no other good reason. Don’t let anyone else decide it for you.

But I do want to be with someone. Sex isn’t bad, and I think the only reason it’s not great is that Chris (and me, maybe) aren’t too good at it, yet? I’m absolutely sure this is something that comes (…sorry, had to) with practice. I just want to be with someone who when we do stuff it’s not always one person or the other thinking “I better do something they like” - I want to spend time with them doing things that both of us like. And then anything we don’t both like, well, that’s what time apart’s for, right?

And I want to travel, too. I’d like to see Europe, at least France and Italy. I’d like to get out to Japan and see for myself just how different everything is. I don’t think I need to be rich - well, I don’t need to stay rich. If I get money I’m going to be OK spending it so long as I get something cool. Experiences are enough. I think they’re what really make you rich.

I hope you’ve travelled, and I hope you have a guy who smiles when he sees you and who thinks about what makes you happy. I hope you’re still in the theatre. And I hope you’ve found something else, something new, that makes you happy, that I would never dream of.

Kember x

*

Her mother handed her the envelope during her lunch break on her thirtieth birthday. Kember had been surprised to see her; they hadn’t really spoken in years, not since she’d changed her mind about college, and honestly if her parents had moved, Kember wouldn’t know how to contact them.

They didn’t exchange any words, there were no smiles. Kember was too surprised to say anything, and her mother just glanced at the smooth silicon swell of Kember’s chest, thinned her lips, and, once the envelope had been taken, walked back out. And honestly, she should never have been allowed into the offices at the store. She’d probably told the other staff she was Kember’s mother, but what did that count for? Kember considered her irrelevant.

She looked at the envelope in her hands for a long while, her injected, swollen lips parted in an attempt to coax sluggish thoughts into life. Kember was perfectly fine with anything she did or dealt with regularly, but anything outside the ordinary took her a while to process.

Then she remembered that she was at work, and this was almost certainly personal, so it should be set aside for later. Acting on a reflex Chris had drilled into her so deeply that it was almost instinct, she folded the envelope, unbuttoned her blouse, and tucked it into her bra to attend to once she got home. Carl and Paige, her office mates, both stared at her, hoping for some kind of explanation, then looked across at one another.

Kember didn’t button her blouse all the way back up. She didn’t explain anything, either.

Work passed largely uneventfully, if only because Kember didn’t care much. She was good at her job - very good - because she had to be, and because she took training very well. Once she’d been shown how to do something once she could do it, again and again, perfectly. On the dot of five, she jiggled to her feet.

As she always did, Kember gave Paige a polite smile and Carl an exaggerated, swaying bow, only her guileless, open smile saving it from looking like a parody. Kember didn’t know it, but both of her officemates always went home thinking of her, with Carl frustrated and needy and Paige trying to work out how Kember dared to always be having a better time, earning more admiring looks, and how it was that Paige liked her in spite of it.

For herself, Kember hurried to the parking lot, got into her 10-year-old Honda Civic, and drove to the supermarket.

She stopped at the supermarket every day, considering her own time less valuable than savings on produce that had been reduced. Her loop of the aisles was brisk and efficient; she knew exactly what was needed and moved automatically from item to item in an order as optimised as if a computer had mapped it out.

When five o’clock ended her working day, Kember was always in a hurry. She had to get home to Chris and Anna. Had to make dinner for the three of them. Had to split the chores with Anna, so they were completed quickly, and had to alternate chores with her so their Master always had a woman on hand to please them.

And that had to be done quickly. Kember was a homebody; time not in the home she had bought for her Master was time lost, except for the duty to earn enough money for his well-being, his whims, and her and Anna’s indoor clothing.

That same dedication had made her a respected member of staff at the store. She was assistant manager now, despite the fact she had no authority when out on the shop floor, but she was efficient, effective, and driven to make her time count. It had been noted.

It had also been noted that she never took a day’s holiday, and hadn’t done since the last day of recovery from her implant surgery. She’d missed only one day of work in the past eight years, when her Master had directed her to instead attend the home of her manager, while he was ill, dressed in a fetish nurse outfit. That had earned the reward of being tied to the day shift and given paperwork duties, which had made it much more convenient for their Master’s daily brainwashing sessions to keep them both in control.

That, of course, had been a great boon to their Master. Neither she nor Anna had tried to shrug off his programming in seven years, a thing they had both occasionally attempted starting on the day of their senior Prom, when he had first taken control of them both.

There had, of course, been careful instruction as to how Kember should bend over when loading or unloading her car. Chris tended to enjoy watching her as she bounced out of the driving seat and bent from the waist, legs straight and feet apart. He also got a kick from seeing the neighbourhood teens watch her, too - he’d joked about it on the phone to his friend the other week, when she was sucking his cock in front of the couch, his beer can balanced precariously between her shoulder blades.

It was as she bent over that she felt the envelope shift in her bra cup and remembered its existence. Curious, she briefly took it out and slipped it into the bags of shopping, then straightened, pivoted, and made her way into the house, hips rolling.

She quickly unpacked the bags and set out the vegetables and meat for their meal, then paused. She took out the envelope and opened it. She read through it curiously. Her lips moved as she read; she didn’t need to sound words out, but her Master enjoyed the look, and a compulsion had developed.

Dear Kember,

Finding a starting place is hard…

“What’s that you’ve got there, bunny?” her Master Chris asked as he sauntered into the room. She felt his hand come down hard onto her ass with a satisfying smack accompanied by her own startled jolt of pleasure. His other hand came around to grab her breast, head dipping to nuzzle at her neck. Kember’s dull grey day lifted for the first time. She giggled happily.

“I don’t think it’s important, Master,” she said, holding it up. He took it from her one-handed and stood behind her reading it, his other hand continuing to play with her tits, making it harder to strip topless as she was programmed so to do.

“Huh,” he said. “I never realised you’d been that mad at me.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Well, that’s over now.”

“Yes, Master.”

He took his hand from her and turned her around so she could watch him rip the letter up and deposit it in the bin. She had no reaction.

“How long til dinner?” he asked.

“No more than half an hour, Master.”

“Good. Well. Everything’s fine then.”

He sauntered back to the other room and the waiting, eager mouth of Anna.